The Spiritual Hierarchies

Schmidt Number: S-1974

On-line since: 16th August, 2005

LECTURE 2

The
teaching which came from the holy Rishis, during the first
post-Atlantean period of civilisation was a knowledge that sprang
from purely spiritual sources of existence. What is so important in
that teaching and in the investigations of those times is that it
entered so deeply into the processes of nature and realised so well
the activity of the spirit in those processes. In reality we are
always surrounded by spiritual activities and by spiritual entities.
When during the time of that ancient holy teaching, mention was made
of the phenomena of the world surrounding us, one was always referred
to as being the most significant, the most important of all these,
this was considered (by that ancient spiritual science) to be the
phenomenon of fire. In all explanations of what exists and happens
upon the earth, the central point of importance was always given to
the spiritual investigation of fire. If we want to understand what we
may call the Eastern teaching about fire, which was of such
far-reaching importance in those ancient times for the acquisition of
the knowledge and understanding of all life, then we must look around
us at the other phenomena and occurrences of nature and see how these
were considered by that very ancient teaching, which can still be
useful nowadays for the purposes of spiritual science. All that
surrounds man in the world was then referred back to the so-called
four elements. These four elements are respected no longer by the
materialistic science of to-day. You all know that these four
elements are called Earth, Water, Air, Fire. But where spiritual
science flourished the word ‘earth’ had not the same
meaning as it has nowadays. It stood for a certain state in the
material realm: the state or condition of solidity. All that is solid
was called ‘earthy’ by the spiritual science of those
times. So whether we take the solid earth of a field, or a piece of
crystal, or lead, or gold, anything that is solid was then called
earth. Everything liquid, not only the water of to-day, was
characterised as watery, or as water. If for instance you take iron,
pass it through heat to the point of melting so that it can flow,
then that liquid iron would have been called water by spiritual
science. All metals when liquid were described as water. Everything
that has the character of air for us to day, no matter whether it was
the condition we call gas, or oxygen, or hydrogen, or other gases,
was called air. Fire was considered the fourth element. Those of you
who remember elementary physics will know that modern science does
not see in fire anything that could be compared with either earth,
water or air: the physical science of to day sees in it only a
certain condition of movement. Spiritual science sees in warmth or
fire something which has in it a still finer substance than air. Just
as earth or solidity changes into liquid, So does all air-substance
change gradually into the condition of fire — according to
spiritual science — and fire is so fine an element that it
interpenetrates all other elements. Fire interpenetrates the air and
makes it warm, the same with water and earth. The other three
elements are, so to speak, separated from each other, but we see the
element of fire interpenetrating them all.

Both ancient and modern spiritual science agree
that there is yet another still more remarkable difference between
what we call Earth, Water, Air, and what we call Fire or Warmth. How
do we come to the cognisance of earth or solidity? Through
touching it. We realise the solid through touching it and feeling its
resistance. It is the same with watery substance. This gives way, it
is not so resistant, still we realize it as something external that
offers resistance. And it is the same with the element of air. We
recognise it also as something external. With warmth it is different.
Here we find something which modern science does not consider
important, but which must become important for us if we want to study
the real problems of existence.

We can realise warmth without coming in contact with it externally.
What is essential is that we can realise warmth by touching a body
which has a certain degree of warmth: we can perceive it externally
in the same way as we realise the three other elements, but we also
feel it in our inward conditions. Therefore ancient science says (and
did so already at the time of the old Indians), that earth, water,
air, can be realised only in the outer world, but warmth is the first
element which can also be felt within oneself. Thus, fire or warmth
has, so to speak, two sides to it. An outer, which it shows when we
take cognisance of it in the outer world and an inner when we feel
that we ourselves are in a certain state of warmth. Man feels his own
condition of warmth; he is hot, or he freezes; but consciously he is
not much concerned with the gaseous or liquid or solid substances —
the air, water, or earth — which are in him. He begins to
‘feel’ himself in the element of warmth. The element of
warmth has an inner and an outward side. Therefore both ancient and
modern spiritual science agree that warmth or fire is that wherein
matter begins to become soul. And so in the true sense of the word —
we may speak of an outer fire which we realise in the other elements,
and of an inner psychic fire within our soul.

In this way, spiritual science always considered
fire as the link between the outer material world on the one side,
and the realm of the soul on the other, which can be known by man
within his inner being. Fire or warmth was placed in the centre of
all observations of nature, because fire is, so to speak, the portal
through which we may pass from the outer into the inner. In all
truth, fire is like a door in front of which one stands. One sees it
from outside, one opens it and can observe it from within. Such is
fire amongst the objects of nature. One touches some object and
becomes acquainted with fire, which streams towards us from outside
like the three other elements: one realises one's own inner
warmth and feels it as something belonging to oneself; one stands
inside the portal, one has entered into the realm of the soul. Thus
was the science of fire described. In fire was seen the interplay of
soul and matter. We have now placed before our souls an elementary
lesson of primeval human wisdom.

The ancient teachers may have spoken thus: ‘Look at that
burning object. See how the fire destroys it. Thou seest two things
in that burning object.’ In those ancient times one was called
smoke, and it may still be so called nowadays, and the other was
called light, and the spiritual scientist saw the fire in the middle
between light and smoke. The teacher said: ‘Out of the flame
are born simultaneously light on the one side, smoke on the other.’
Now we must for once put very clearly before us a very simple but
very far-reaching fact, which has to do with the light, which is born
of fire. It is most probable that many people when asked whether they
see the light would answer: ‘Yes, of course.’ And yet
this answer is as false as possible; for, in truth, no physical eye
can see light. Through light one sees objects which are solid,
liquid, or gaseous, but the light itself one does not see. Imagine
the whole of universal space illuminated by a light the source of
which was somewhere behind you, where you could not see it and you
were to look into the world spaces illuminated through and through by
that light. Would you see the light? You would see absolutely
nothing. You would first see something when some object was placed
within that illuminated space. One does not see the light, one sees
the solid, the watery, the gaseous, by means of the light. One does
not see physical light with the physical eye. This is something which
comes before the spiritual eye with particular clearness. Spiritual
science says therefore: light makes everything visible, but is itself
invisible. This sentence is important: light is imperceptible. It
cannot be perceived by the outer senses: one call perceive what is
solid, liquid, or gaseous, finally one can perceive warmth or fire
outwardly. This one can also begin to feel inwardly, but light
itself one can no longer perceive outwardly. If you believe that when
you see the sun you see light you are mistaken: you see a flaming
body, a burning substance out of which the light streams. It could be
proved to you that you have there gaseous, liquid, and earthy
substances. You do not see light, you see that which is burning. But
spiritual science says we pass in ascending order from earth to
water, from air to fire, and then to light, we pass thus from the
outwardly recognisable world, from the visible world into the
invisible, into the etheric-spiritual world. Fire stands on the
border between the outwardly visible, material world, and that which
is etheric and spiritual, which is no more outwardly visible or
recognisable. What happens to a body that is destroyed through fire?
What happens when something burns? When something burns, we see on
one side light appear, which is outwardly imperceptible and which is
operative in the spiritual world. Something that is not merely outer
material gives forth the warmth and when it is strong enough to
become a source of light it yields something invisible, something
which cannot be recognised any more through the outer senses, but it
must pay for this in smoke. From what was formerly translucent and
transparent it has to bring forth something not transparent —
something of the nature of smoke. Thus you see how warmth or fire
becomes differentiated, how it divides. On one side it divides itself
into light, with which it opens a way into the super-sensible world,
and in payment for that which it sends up as light into the
super-sensible world, it must send something down into the material
world, into the world of non-transparent, visible things. Nothing
one-sided comes forth in the world. Everything that exists has two
sides to it. When light is produced through warmth, then turbid, dark
matter appears on the other side. That is the teaching of primeval
spiritual science.

But the process we have just described is only the outer side, the
physical, material process. At the foundation of this physically
material process there lies something essentially different. When you
have only warmth in some object which as yet does not shine, then
this warmth which you perceive is itself the outer physical part but
within it is something spiritual. When this warmth grows so strong
that it begins to shine and smoke is formed, then some of the spirit
which was in the warmth must go into the smoke. That spiritual part
which was in the warmth and has passed into the smoke, which being
gaseous and belonging to air is a lower element than warmth, that
spiritual part is transmuted, bewitched, as it were, into smoke. Thus
with everything which like a turbid extract or a materialisation is
deposited by the warmth, there is also associated what might be
called the bewitching of some spiritual being. We can explain it
still more simply. Let us imagine that we reduce air to a watery
condition. Air itself is nothing but solidified warmth, densified
warmth in which smoke has been formed. The spiritual part which
really wanted to be in the fire has been bewitched into smoke.
Spiritual beings, which are also called elementals, are bewitched in
all air, and will even be bewitched, banished, so to speak, to a
lower existence, when air is changed into water. Hence spiritual
science sees in everything that is outwardly perceptible something
that has proceeded from an original condition of fire or warmth and
which has turned into air, smoke, or gas, when the warmth began to
condense into gas, gas into liquid, liquid into solid. ‘Look
backwards,’ says the spiritual scientist, look at any solid
substance. That solidity was once liquid, it is only in the course of
evolution that it has become solid and the liquid was once upon a
time gaseous and the gaseous formed itself as smoke, out of the fire.
But a transmutation, a bewitching of spiritual being is always
connected with these processes of condensation and with the formation
of gases and solids.

Let us now look around at our world: we see solid rocks, flowing
streams of water, we see the water changing into rising mist: we see
the air, we see all the solid, liquid, gaseous things and we see
fire, so that at the foundation of all things we have nothing but
fire. All is fire — solidified fire: gold, silver, copper, are
solidified fire. All things were once upon a time fire; everything
has been born out of fire. But in all that solidified realm, some
bewitched spirits are dwelling.

How are those spiritual, divine beings who surround us able to
produce solid matter as it is on our planet — to produce
liquids, and air substances? They send down their elemental spirits,
those which live in the fire: they imprison them in air, in water and
in earth. These are the emissaries, the elemental emissaries of the
spiritual, creative, building beings. The elemental spirits first
enter into fire. In fire they still feel comfortable — if we
care to express it by images — and then they are condemned to a
life of bewitchment. We can say looking around us: ‘These
beings, whom we have to thank for all the things that surround us,
had to come down out of the fire-element; they are bewitched in those
things.’

Can we as men do anything to help those elemental spirits? This is
the great question which was put by the Holy Rishis. Can we do
anything to release, to redeem, all that is here, bewitched? Yes! We
can help them. Because what we men do here in the physical world is
nothing else than an outward expression of spiritual processes. All
we do is also of importance for the spiritual world. Let us consider
the following. A man stands in front of a crystal, or a lump of gold,
or anything of that kind. He looks at it. What happens when a man
simply gazes, simply stares with his physical eye upon some outer
object? A continual interplay occurs between the man and the
bewitched elemental spirits. The man and that which is bewitched in
the substance have something to do with each other. Let us suppose
that the man only stares at the object and takes in only what is
impressed on his physical eye. Something is always passing from the
elemental being into the man. Something from those bewitched
elementals passes continually into the man, from morning till night.
While you are thus regarding objects, hosts of these elemental
beings, who were and are being continually bewitched through the
world-processes of condensation, are continually entering from your
surroundings into you. Let us take it that the man staring at the
objects has no inclination whatever to think about those objects, no
inclination to let the spirit of things live in his soul. He lives
comfortably, merely passes through the world, but he does not work on
it spiritually, with his ideas or feelings or in any such way. He
remains simply a spectator of the material things he meets with in
the world. Then these elemental spirits pass into him and remain
there, having gained nothing from the world's process, but the
fact of having passed from the outer world into man. Let us take
another kind of man, one who works spiritually on the impressions he
receives from the outer world, who with his understanding and ideas
forms conceptions regarding the spiritual foundations of the world,
one who does not simply stare at a metal, but ponders over its nature
and feels the beauty which inspires and spiritualises his
impressions. What does such a man do? Through his own spiritual
process, he releases the elemental being which has streamed into him
from the outer world; he raises it to what it was before, he frees
the elemental from its state of enchantment. Thus, through our own
spiritual life, we can, without changing them, either imprison within
us those spirits which are bewitched in air, water and earth, or else
through our own increasing spirituality, free them and lead them back
to their own element. During the whole of his earthly life, man lets
those elemental spirits stream into him from the outer world. In the
same measure in which he only stares at things, in the same measure
in which he simply lets the spirit dwell in him without transforming
them, so, in like measure as he tries with his ideas, conceptions and
feeling for beauty to work out spiritually what he sees in the outer
world, does he release and redeem those spiritual elemental beings.

Now what happens to those elemental beings which, having come out of
things, enter into man? They remain at first within him. Also those
which are released at first remain, but they stay only until his
death. When the man passes through death a differentiation takes
place between those elemental beings which have simply passed into
him and which he had not led back to their higher element, and those
whom he has through his own spiritualisation led back to their former
condition. Those whom the man has not changed have not gained
anything from their passage from the outer world into him, but others
have gained the possibility of returning to their own original world
with the man's death. During his life man is a place of
transition for these elemental beings. When he has passed through the
spiritual world and returns to earth in his next incarnation, all the
elemental beings which he has not released during his former life
flock into him again when he passes through the portals of his new
birth, they return with him into the physical world; but those he has
released he does not bring back with him for they have returned into
their original element.

Thus we see how man has it in his power, by the way he acts and feels
towards outer nature, either to release those elemental spirits which
have been necessarily bewitched through the coming into existence of
our earth, or to bind them to the earth still more strongly than they
were before. What does a man do when, in looking at some outer object
he releases from it an elemental being by elucidating it? He
spiritually does the opposite of what has been done before.
Previously, smoke had been brought forth out of fire, but man
spiritually forms fire again out of that smoke; only after death does
he release this fire. Now think for a moment of the endless depth and
spirituality of the ancient ceremonies of sacrifice, as seen in the
light of primeval spiritual science! Imagine to yourselves the Priest
at the sacrificial altar in those times when religion was built on
the real knowledge of spiritual laws; think of the Priest lighting
the flame, and the rising of the smoke, and as the smoke rises a real
sacrifice is offered, for it is followed upwards by prayers —
What happens then? What happens during such a sacrifice? The Priest
stands at the altar where the smoke is produced. Where something
solid comes out of the warmth, a spirit is being transmuted,
bewitched. But because the man follows the whole procedure with
prayers, he at the same time receives that spirit into himself in
such a way that after death it rises again into the higher world.
What did the teacher of ancient wisdom say to those who had to
understand this? He said: ‘If thou lookest upon the outer world
in such a way that thy spiritual process does not stop at the smoke,
but rises to the element of fire, then after thy death thou dost free
the spirit which is bewitched in the smoke.’ Yes! The teacher
who knew the fate of the spirit, which after being bewitched in the
smoke had passed into man, spoke thus: ‘If thou leavest that
spirit as it was when it was in the smoke, then it must be reborn
with thee and cannot rise into the spiritual world after thy death;
but if thou hast released it and restored it to the fire, then after
thy death it will rise again into the spiritual worlds and will not
need to return to the earth at thy rebirth.’

Now we have explained one part of that profound sentence from the
Bhagavad Gita of which I spoke in my last lecture. It does not speak
here at all of the human Ego, it speaks of those nature spirits, of
these elemental beings which enter into man from the outer world, and
it says there: ‘Behold the fire, behold the smoke, that which
man through his spiritual processes turns into fire are spirits which
he liberates with his death.’ That which he leaves as it is, in
the smoke, must remain united to him at his death and must be reborn
with him when he returns to earth. It is the destiny of the elemental
spirits that is here described; through the wisdom which man
develops, he continually liberates at his death these elemental
spirits; through lack of wisdom, through the materialistic attachment
to the mere things of the senses, he ties those elemental spirits to
himself and forces them to follow him into this world, ever to be
born again with him.

But these elemental beings are not only associated with fire and with
what is connected with fire, they are the emissaries of higher
spiritual divine beings in all that takes place in the outer sense
world. There never could have been that interplay of forces in the
world that produce the day and the night, for instance, if numbers of
such elemental being had not worked suitably at the rotation of the
planet through the universe, so that precisely this interchange of
day and night could come about. All that takes place is the result of
the activity of hosts of lower and higher spiritual entities
belonging to the spiritual hierarchies. We have been speaking of the
lowest order, of the messengers. When night becomes day and day
night, elemental beings live also in that process, and so it is that
man stands in an intimate relationship with the beings of the
elemental world which have to take part in working at the day and the
night. When man is idle and lets himself go, he affects those
elementals who have to do with the day and the night quite
differently, than when he has creative force, when he is active,
diligent, and productive. When a man is lazy for instance, he unites
himself with a certain kind of elemental and he also does so when he
is active, but in a particular way. Those elementals of the second
class, just named, who are active during the day, are then in their
higher element. As fire elementals, those of the first class, are
bound in air water and earth, so certain elemental being are also
tied to darkness; and day could not turn into night, day could not be
divided from night, if these elementals were not so to speak
imprisoned in night. That man is able to enjoy daylight, he has to
thank divine spiritual beings who have driven forth elemental spirits
and have chained them to the night-time. When man is lazy these
elementals flow into him continually, but he leaves them as they are,
unchanged. Those elemental spirits which at night are chained to
darkness, he let through his idleness remain in the same state; those
elemental who enter into him when he is active and industrious and
filled with working power, he leads back into daylight. Thus he
continually releases these elementals of the second class. Throughout
the whole of our lifetime we bear within us all those elemental
spirits which have entered into us either during our hours of
idleness or during those of active work. When we pass through the
gates of death those beings whom we have led towards daylight can now
return into the spirit world; those we have left chained to the night
through our idleness, must return with us in our new incarnation.
With this we arrive at the second point in the Bhagavad Gita. Again
it is not the human self, but those elemental beings which are
indicated with the words: ‘Behold the day and the night. That
which thou hast thyself released by turning it from a being of the
night into a being of the day through thy diligence; that which comes
forth out of the day enters when thou diest, into the higher world;
that which thou takest with thee as beings of the night, thou forcest
to reincarnate with thee again.’

And now you will see clearly how the matter proceeds. As it is with
the phenomena of which we have just spoken, so it is on a larger
scale with our month of 28 days, with the changes of the waxing and
waning moon. Whole flocks of elemental beings have to come into
activity to direct the motions of the moon so that our lunar periods
can come about as they do with all the influences they bring with
them upon our visible earth. For this purpose certain of the higher
beings had again to be bewitched, doomed, chained. Clairvoyant vision
sees how, with the waxing moon, spiritual beings of a lower kingdom
ever rise into a higher. But, so that order should exist, other
spiritual elemental beings must again be transformed into those of
lower realms. There are also those elementals of a third realm who
stand in relationship with men. When man is serene and bright, when
he is pleased with the world, when he has feelings of gladness
towards all things, he continually releases those beings which are
chained to the waning moon. These beings enter into him and are
continually set free, through his soul's peaceful attitude,
through his inner contentment, through his harmonious feelings and
ideas towards the whole world. The beings which enter into man when
he is sullen, peevish, morose, discontented with anything, when
everything depresses him — when he is pessimistic — these
spirits remain in the condition of bewitchment they were in at the
time of the waning moon. Oh! There are men who through the harmonious
condition of their soul, through the bright way they look upon the
world, release and set free great numbers of these bewitched
elemental beings. The man of harmonious and optimistic feelings and
who feels inner satisfaction with the world, is a deliverer of
elemental spiritual beings. The pessimist, he who is morose, sullen
and discontented, becomes through his depression the gaoler of
elemental spirits which could have been released by his cheerfulness.
Thus you see that the conditions of mind and soul have not only a
personal importance for this man, but also that he works either at
the liberation or the imprisonment of spiritual beings; either
deliverance or fetters proceed from him. The conditions of soul that
a man experiences go out in all directions into the spiritual world.
We have here the third point of that important teaching in the
Bhagavad Gita: ‘Behold what man does through the feelings and
conditions of his soul, how he sets spirits free, as they are set
free by the growing moon.’ When the man dies, these released
spirits can return to the spiritual world. If through his depression
and hypochondriacal moods, he calls to him the elemental spirits
which are around him, and then leaves them as they are, as they have
to be in order to bring about the orderly courses of the moon, then
these spirits remain chained to him and must reincarnate with him
into this world.

And last of all we have a fourth degree of elemental spirits, those
who have to work at the annual course of the sun, so that the summer
sun may shine upon the earth to awaken and fructify it, so that
spring can appear and be succeeded by autumn. In order that this may
come to pass certain spirits must be fettered to winter-time, must be
bewitched during the time of the winter sun. And man acts upon these
spirits in the same way as we have described his acting on the other
grades of spirits. Let us take man who at the beginning of winter
says to himself: ‘The nights are getting longer, the days
shorter, we come to that time of the sun's yearly course when
the sun withdraws his fructifying forces from the earth. The outer
earth dies, but with this deadening of the earth I feel it my duty to
be all the more spiritually awake. I must now take more and more of
the spirit within me.’ Let us take a man who acquires a more
and more religious mood appropriate to the season as Christmas comes
on, who learns to know the significance of Christmas and to know also
that when the outer world of the senses is dead the life of the
spirit must now grow stronger. This man lives through winter until
Easter. He remembers that with the awakening of the outer world is
combined the death of the spiritual: he lives through the Easter
festival comprehending its meaning. Such a man has not only an outer
religion; he has religious understanding of the processes of nature,
of the spirit which rules it; and through his piety, his
spirituality, he releases numbers of that fourth class of elemental
beings which continually stream in and out of him, which are
connected with the course of the sun. But the man who is not pious in
this sense, who denies or does not understand the spirit and is
always muddling through a materialistic chaos, into him these
elementals of the fourth class flow, but remain unchanged. At death
it happens again: that these elemental spirits of the fourth degree
are either set free in their own element, or else are bound to the
man and have to return with him at his next incarnation. Thus, the
man, who uniting with the winter spirits does not change them into
summer spirits, does not redeem them through his spirituality, dooms
them to rebirth, whereas they might have been freed and not have had
to return with him. Behold the fire and the smoke! If you so unite
with the outer world that the activity of your soul and spirit is
like that of fire, from which smoke comes forth, so that you
spiritualise things, through knowledge and through right feeling, you
help certain spiritual elemental beings to rise; but if you unite
with the smoke you condemn them to rebirth. If you associate yourself
with the day, you then set free the corresponding spirits of day and
so on. Behold the light! Behold the day! Behold the waxing of the
moon and the sunny half of the year! If you act so that you lead the
elemental spirits back to the light, to the day, to the waxing moon,
to the summer-time of the year, you then at your death release these
elementary spirits which are so necessary to you. They rise to the
spiritual world. If you associate yourself with the smoke, if you
only gaze at the solid things of the earth, if through laziness you
unite yourself with the night and with the spirits of the waning
moon, and if through your depression you unite yourself with those
spirits who are chained to the winter sun, then through your lack of
spirit, your godlessness, you condemn these elementary beings to be
reincarnated with you again!

Now we know for the first time what this passage in the Bhagavad Gita
really means. If anyone thinks that man is here spoken of, he does
not understand the Bhagavad Gita; but those who know that all human
life is a continual interplay between man and the spirits who live
bewitched into our surroundings and who must be released again —
those know that these sentences speak of the ascension or of the
reincarnation of four groups of elemental beings. The mystery of this
lowest kind of hierarchy has been preserved for us in these sentences
in the Bhagavad Gita. Yes! When one has to bring forth out of
primeval wisdom what is presented to us in the documents of ancient
religion, one sees how grand these are and how wrong it is to
understand them superficially and not in all their profundity. They
are only considered in the right way when one says to oneself: ‘No
wisdom is exalted enough to discover the mysteries herein contained.’
Only when these ancient documents are interpenetrated by the magic of
real devotional feeling, do they become what in the true sense of the
word they must be — self-ennobling and purifying forces for
human evolution. They point frequently to fathomless abysses of human
wisdom, and only when that which springs from the sources of the
occult schools and the mysteries, streams forth from now on to all
mankind, only then, will these reflections of the primeval wisdom
(for they are but reflections) be seen in all their greatness. We
have had to show, by means of a comparatively difficult example, how
in the times of primeval wisdom the co-operation of all those spirits
which are everywhere around us was well known, how it was also known
that the deeds of men represent an interchanging activity between the
spiritual world and the world of man's own inner being. The
problem of humanity first becomes important for us, when we know that
in all we do, even in our moods, we influence a whole Cosmos, and
that this small world of ours is of infinitely far-reaching
importance for all that comes to pass in the macrocosm. An increase
in our feeling of responsibility is the finest and most important of
all the things we gain from spiritual science. It teaches us to grasp
the true meaning of life and to realise its importance, so that this
life which we cast on the stream of evolution may not enter that
stream void of meaning.